I don't want to have to group up is my point. It's stupid to have to seek out a group when we're all already fighting together. I'm even in Teamspeak when I'm in WvW for crying out loud, why should I need to group up? As for my game, I play a lot of WvW. Or I did. Grouping is only necessary when you're running a small yak killing/camp taking or defending group (and I do group for those things) It is not necessary when running with 50+ others.

You don't have to. But that's your own problem. Less rewards for not grouping. More rewards for grouping. Could be designed that way. And this is in no way a bad thing. MMO's are social games. Grouping should be encouraged by offering better incentives.

I leveled my first toon from level 30 to 70 on wvwvw. Was a mesmer. Worst experience ever. I couldn't properly obliberate people. Because every time I found a proper dueler a full exotics 80 show up and clean the mud with all the lows around. With just 1 skill.

Actually im leveling more toons, and im not stupid. I know that there are many more 80's than the first days. I know that there many more exotics cleaning the mud with lows around. So I basically don't walk over wvwvw. And when I do I roam alone with my mesmer cleaning the mud with lowbies no matter how many of them. And taking my revenge of thief cloak & dagger instagib. I don't feel like looking a zerg and using 1 skill every 45 seconds and back off is funny. I only enjoy roaming solo or guild playing. But I don't have enought time for guilds so...

For me the problem is actually that the scale from low level to 80 is not made properly. Because I do A LOT more damage to lowbies, no matter if they're build around vit around toghness or no matter if the actual 80 is full beserk. Low levels take more damage (maybe because of the level difference). That's basically why I'm not "learning pvp" on wvwvw with my lowbies. Instead I prefer to spvp and learn about the history of tyria.

You don't have to. But that's your own problem. Less rewards for not grouping. More rewards for grouping. Could be designed that way. And this is in no way a bad thing. MMO's are social games. Grouping should be encouraged by offering better incentives.

Yes, just like every MMO, treating solo players like garbage. I thought this game would be different. I was wrong.

No but I'm very familiar with the concept and despite that, will still need you to elaborate on how it could possibly apply to the Mechanics that make a Turtle-Caravan Zerg less feasible; when only 5 of them can be hit by any AoE at any one time. (and then that AoE doesn't even kill anyone unless it's stacked with 4 others).

Because mesmers now have to stand around with their thumb up their arse during keep attacks.

Sure, it's a small thing, but I do have to wonder about competence of design decisions when a class is reduced to uselessness with respect to a major part of WvW without also introducing some way to compensate.

I am a player who actually likes WvW. This is my favorite concept in a game, along with GvG. I love large scale fights.

Even I play WvW only occasionally, and that is because I also care for character progression. There is just no progression in WvW, aside from WvW achievements. I need to be clear that I have NOT played WvW since the new patch came out last night, and do not know how significant the new buffs to loot drops are.

Suppose you wanted items. The drop rate was so abysmal that you could probably farm loot at 50x the rate in Cursed Shore events. One is more fun than the other, but the discrepancy was just far too vast.

Suppose you wanted karma. Again, event chains gave it to you faster and easier. You could safely use boosters in event chains, and run/tag, knowing that you are guaranteed to benefit from them. Captures in WvW are far from guaranteed, or fast. With the new implementation of karma drops/jugs, this is almost a moot point.

Suppose you wanted badges. This is the worst of all: even WvW is the worst for farming that. I don't judge the badge drop rate as too high or too low, but relative to the jumping puzzle, it's awful. I can do the 'home' BL JP in about 5-6 minutes. "away" BL JPs, you need to do quite a bit of running and evasion, and it may take about 10 mins. Thieves are good at this, I also recommend off-hand dagger eles (it's hard to catch RTL), Warhorn Warriors (if you must use a level 1 alt). At any rate, they produce an average of 4.5 badges/ run (between 3-6). Meaning if you just do the home BL puzzle, you can get ~13-14 badges in 15 minutes. If you can average that pace over several hours of WvW, that would be impressive, because I cannot. 4.5 badges / puzzle X 3 puzzles per character X 5 characters (at minimum) = potential of ~67.5 badges/day before you have to resort to actually fighting in WvW in get more. This resets every day.

Jumping Puzzles are not WvW, even though they occur there. When i go for them, I run straight by enemies and emote /wave to them in the JPs to know that I have no intention of attacking them (some wave back, people are nicer than average). This is not WvW. This design element is the worst of all: The best and fastest way to get the token unique to WvW, is to not play WvW.

This dwindles to the last point of WvW: the achievements. This is the only leg it stands on right now in terms of character progression. Even if you wanted achievement points, the requirements for advancement take so long that you're better off doing everything else in the game before WvW.

I still play WvW, because it's fun. If that's the only audience you can get, though, WvW will be deserted many days (and it is).

The original question seems directed at why the general population is not attracted to WvW.
I believe I've set out the reasons pretty clearly: players as a whole want progression. WvW has none to offer.

Instead of armor repair costs they should just bring back the Death penalty from GW1, then there would also be a reason for those stupid animals outside spawn points, you kill those animals to cleanse your DP.

Quoting this because I like it and surprised no one else +1'd it. DP would work much better as an attrition mechanic in WvWvW and it would help encourage intelligent longterm play. It would also make it easier to chip into zergs over time, since players would be forced to either stop to work out their DP on mobs or rejoin the zerg critically weakened.

I can't believe there are people defending armor repair for PvP. It works in PvE becase the encounters are largely static. The vast majority of the time you will die and need armor repair because you made a critical mistake. Human players are unpredictable and not all of your deaths are going to be your fault. If you're really good, not even half of them will be. It's sometimes just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and being penalized for it with a resource mainly used in PvE feels almost insulting.

I know that the point is a goldsink, but a goldsink does not work if it's discouraging people from participating in the mechanics it's attached to in the first place.

Hey, while I'm complaining, why the hell do I have to go to WvWvW for map completion? I'm not a PvPer. I don't want to have to deal with hostile players in order to finish a largely PvE exploration goal. I don't enjoy PvP! All I'd be doing is wasting a player slot in the queue and indirectly working against my server for my own personal gain. Because I'd feel bad about that, I'm just going to sit out on map completion until that's fixed. That and my main is a mesmer and I'd be screwing over any tiny part of me interested in PvP by getting that 100% star.

Few things, WvW will never be balanced. And that is one of the most alluring aspects of it. Go out in a small grp and fight off a larger group of players. You enjoy PvP on equal footing but thats just a pseudo environment. In real wars resources, manpower and fortifications are always limited and to manage it is war.

If I feel like my team has no reasonable chance of winning the game is frustrating.

If I feel like my team has no reasonable chance of losing the game is boring.

I can only really have fun in PvP when the fight is at least roughly even. When that happens I have a lot of fun.

So, in other words, I cherry pick the PvP formats, in whichever games I'm able to play, where the fight is mostly even. I play to have fun, not to be bored or frustrated. I might take a look at GW2's WvW from time to time, but I play over 10x more sPvP than WvW, and I don't foresee that changing in the near future.

BTW, I don't care about rewards in PvP. Heck, I prefer PvP games where there aren't rewards, where the only motivation to fight is because the player actually likes fighting. In my experience, this makes for the best, most fun fights in any game.

omar316, on 15 November 2012 - 04:05 AM, said:

Playing with friends from other servers is fine but does not play well with a concept like WvW. There is no identity. In DaOC you had Albion, Midgard or Hibernia. Unique classes. In WAR you have 2 sides of a warring world. Order and Destruction. There were also unique classes and playstyles. It gave a sense of identity. A purpose to fight. Realm pride, though it was later demolished due to same server different factions, Realm crossing spies and whatever shit. Likewise we got 3 different servers, but they *ed it with generic maps and no class diversity. Which is fine, but hell, even TOR did it better. Empire vs Republic. I can still remember the names of some of the hardest playing players. All I see now is Dragonbrand[Tag].

I don't care in the least about server identity. Never cared in any game I ever played, and I don't think I ever will. On the other hand, I really hate enforced segregation, even when it only affects a single aspect of the game I'm not prone to play much (which is the case of GW2, which has absolute server segregation for WvW). I would be far happier with GW2 if ANet abolished the concept of home servers, actually.

If I feel like my team has no reasonable chance of winning the game is frustrating.

If I feel like my team has no reasonable chance of losing the game is boring.

I can only really have fun in PvP when the fight is at least roughly even. When that happens I have a lot of fun.

So, in other words, I cherry pick the PvP formats, in whichever games I'm able to play, where the fight is mostly even. I play to have fun, not to be bored or frustrated. I might take a look at GW2's WvW from time to time, but I play over 10x more sPvP than WvW, and I don't foresee that changing in the near future.

BTW, I don't care about rewards in PvP. Heck, I prefer PvP games where there aren't rewards, where the only motivation to fight is because the player actually likes fighting. In my experience, this makes for the best, most fun fights in any game.

I don't care in the least about server identity. Never cared in any game I ever played, and I don't think I ever will. On the other hand, I really hate enforced segregation, even when it only affects a single aspect of the game I'm not prone to play much (which is the case of GW2, which has absolute server segregation for WvW). I would be far happier with GW2 if ANet abolished the concept of home servers, actually.

Again, that's just you.
I'd gladly go into a group of 5 solo just for the heck of it. See how much I can do before going down. That's satisfying for me. I understand if you feel different. I know many who are like that.

Like wise you need to know there are many coat tail zerg surfers. These are the majority. It's an undeniable fact. They play to win, and many don't really care, or actually have time to care if they outnumber the opponents or not. They just want to win with the limited time they have. That isn't bad either.

Also just because you dont care about identity does not mean many don't care either. In fact Guild vs Guild is 1 of the most requested feature. Also having an identity, a sense of belonging really helps to strive better, play better for that identity. It's just a natural response.

I think the main purpose of this thread is to get a general idea on how to improve WvW. Instead of saying what does not work for you it'd be better if you can express what you'd like.

I think the main purpose of this thread is to get a general idea on how to improve WvW. Instead of saying what does not work for you it'd be better if you can express what you'd like.

What I would want:

- Rewards more or less evened out across all participating players, no matter if his side is winning or losing, and roughly equivalent on a time investment basis to farming end-game content. BTW, making rewards roughly equivalent for everyone can also be reached by actually making the fight balanced enough that the sides are always close to each other.

- AFK detection; kick out of the WvW maps any player that is AFK, or else seems to just be moving the mouse a bit from time to time to keep from being tagged as AFK. This is really needed if rewards normalization is added.

- PvE activities shut down on a map when one side starts getting queues there. Drawing more PvE players into the (PvP) map when PvP players aren't able to get inside is just dumb.

- Balancing mechanisms making the game harder for whoever is ahead; ideally the balancing mechanisms should bring as many games to a 3-ways tie as possible. A runaway victory should be impossible, or as close to that as can be reached. After all, players don't really need an incentive to win, they naturally want that even if only for the bragging rights.

- Untie gold spending from WvW. Currently gold - and having wealthy players on your side - makes too much of a difference, plus players on the losing side can be chased away by the repair bills. I don't think PvP should have repair bills, and I really think the game would be better if siege engines and upgrades didn't require, or even allow, players to use their personal gold to purchase them.

- Gear normalization besides the already existing level normalization. Ideally a lv30 character in mastercraft gear and a lv80 character in exotic gear, played by equally skilled players, should have close to an even chance against each other.

- Unlock home server transfers, or even remove the concept of home servers altogether. If you want to stay in a single community and isolate yourself from the other ones, fine, but don't drag me away into that kind of dumb, pointless segregation. As long as proper balancing mechanisms are in place the incentive to transfer chasing the winning side dies out anyway.

- More incentives to go solo or in small groups, less incentive to have huge zergs; spread the player base more across the map. It should help with the performance and culling (invisible players) problem as a side effect.

- Faster travel; have a few permanent, uncontestable waypoints around the map but away from actual objectives. Taking 5 minutes to get to the action is just plain dumb.

I think WvW is alot of fun. And I do belive that it has a lot to do with tactics. I been bashing zerge 3 times my guilds number and taking objectives and defending in those odds.
They can absolutely improve the pvp system in many ways and 1 thing is the repair cost. But the game is a couple of month old, be patient I think they are doing good changes to the game.
And about PvPers thinking WvW aint pvp. Well sPvP and like another game arenas have absolutely NOTHING to do with a MMO. Sitting around in a pvp zone or in a city waiting for spvp to start doing nothing is shit. MMO is about interacting with other players fighting over a “purpose”.
sPvP, Arenas, battlegrounds are so bad it makes my eyes bleed. If that is what you call pvp why don’t you play games like dota instead then…

I don't play much atm, because of less time to play. But what really sucks in wuvwuv is invisible enemies and dagger rogues when I'm not on my warrior.
What else sucks:
- repair costs
- much running for supplies
- no real world pvp - mostly zerg armies